Distracted, little discipline - how to motivate yourself to work?

[CaptainPanic]

It's a typical Friday afternoon. I just cannot get my focus. I allow myself to get distracted all the time. The most urgent tasks are really boring, and the cool stuff isn't urgent at all... I don't want to do what is urgent, and I shouldn't be doing what I want to do... and I end up doing very little at all.

 

I am working in a research environment, where individual researchers are allowed a lot of freedom. There is nobody who will check what I am doing - especially not on a Friday... As long as the projects are finished within their allocated time and budget, nobody complains.

 

Still, I cannot escape the feeling that my productivity could be higher, if only I could give myself a kick in the ass. I am sure a couple of the regular characters here know what I mean (they're regulars here after all). What works well for me is to play music on my earphones, thus blocking some distractions from colleagues... but I always think it is a bit anti-social. I'm looking for other tips and tricks.

 

What works for you, to keep you away from Facetube, Youbook or whatever distracts you?

[Phi for All]

If you're getting very little done but feel you should be working on the urgent stuff, just pick one of the urgent things and do it, do it quickly before the boredom can set in. Focus on it so it gets done quickly. If you would have blown it off anyway, you should be able to feel good about getting just that one thing done and off your plate.

 

Don't listen to music, don't let your mind wander as you work. Focus on the boring task, put everything you've got into it (maybe even figuring out a better, quicker way to get it done). I find myself putting off the mundane tasks simply because I've predetermined they'll be boring. So I focus on them and they're usually done before I can get bored.

 

I think I let my mind wander during routine too often, and that makes it SEEM boring. Focus just makes the routine go more quickly. Then you get to reward yourself with a little YouFace.

[Arete]

As a postdoc, I work in a pretty similar environment. We actually have an informal seminar series/happy hour Friday afternoons for the grad students and postdocs, where someone presents their work, and we all have a beer together - which we organized and works great.

 

If I am constantly finding myself procrastinating I generally get up walk around and make a coffee, then sit down to another task. I tend to get in the groove and then switch back to what I was avoiding in the first place, and usually make some progress. Sometimes it doesn't work though.

[CharonY]

What I found over the years is that kicking yourself to do stuff usually does not work (at least for me). I am also working in an academic setting (roughly on faculty level) and have to keep track of a lot of projects and administrative things on a long time scale. It is easy to forget things, or just put them off until last minute, when everything has to be done in a rush.
What worked best for me is to use a time tracking and prioritization and tweak them to the way I work. By allocating time in a bit more rigid manner I ensure that I get progress in all the things I need to keep track of, without having to constantly think and worry about them (which may lead to further procrastination).

So I would for instance figure out which tasks require more creativity (e.g. papers, grant applications, to some extent talks) and allocate more or less on a daily basis a larger, coherent time slot for it, usually at a time when I am mentally most active. Within in these time slots I would e.g. read papers, bounce ideas off colleagues etc.
Boring but easy tasks such as responding to emails could be done early morning while barely awake, lab time could be later in the evening, according to taste.
The important bit is that I do break up this work with rest and pause times, where I e.g. use the internet for a few minutes or chat with colleagues to de-focus a bit in a guilt-free manner (it is scheduled after all!) as a kind of reward for boring tasks.

There are quite a number of other tweaks and things will vary quite a bit in the way one would prioritize things (ideally in a way that there are only few absolutely urgent and relevant things at the same time) but it will vary from workplace to workplace.
And obviously I cannot claim that the whole thing works perfectly, but giving myself (arbitrary) timelines helps me to get things done in a realistic manner. Productivity can, in theory, always be higher, but if one obsesses too much about it, I think it will actually decline.

Edited March 15, 2013 by CharonY

[Bill Angel]

It's a typical Friday afternoon. I just cannot get my focus....

 

What works well for me is to play music on my earphones, thus blocking some distractions from colleagues... but I always think it is a bit anti-social. I'm looking for other tips and tricks...

 

What works for you, to keep you away from Facetube, Youbook or whatever distracts you?

 

I like the use that you make of the word focus.

My advice to you is to take up photography as a way to refresh your mind by switching your focus to other activities, but in a creative way.

You could go outside and do street photography.

If you are situated or work near to a college campus, you could photograph objects that are of interest on that campus, the students, the buildings, etc.

(I've done a lot of photography at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore)

Photography is now more of a social activity than it is a solitary pursuit, because of the internet.

[timo]

I am sure a couple of the regular characters here know what I mean (they're regulars here after all).

Interesting observation. My Internet activities underwent a sudden drop when I hit PhD level and for the first time in my life actually liked physics. Which leads me to the recommendation I would offer: Get a job you enjoy. Not in the sense that you find molecular biochemistry an amazing topic, but in the sense that mixing together your reagents, diligently typing your result into an Excel sheet or improving the colors of your plot for the talk next week (or whatever molecular biochemists may actually do) is more interesting than collecting the next 50 gold pieces from Orc raiding or trying to preach to "relativity is wrong" ignorants on a webpage.

 

Making a written plan, as CharonY points out, also works well for me. Not only with the huge "do not forget" lists I carry around nowadays. Also as a PhD student the difference between scribbling the three points "add errobars to plot, restart simulation with higher temperature, reply to mail from X" on the piece of paper and not doing so made a surprisingly large difference for me (if only for realizing that starting the simulations should probably be moved to the top of the list). And if we are honest: despite all the complaints and horror stories about long working hours these three points roughly correspond to the daily workload of a PhD student in academia .

 

For the record: it's 21:15 on a Friday evening in Germany right now, and I brought some work home for the weekend. I have the right to post here now

Edited March 15, 2013 by timo

[zapatos]

Make commitments to people regarding when work will be complete. Mention it to people around you. The more people who know when you will complete some work, the more likely you will be to actually do it. No one wants others to think of them as lazy or undependable.

 

If I want to lose five pounds I tell my wife I'm going on a diet. I have a hard time preparing a bowl of ice cream in front of her when I just told her I was going to lose weight. Fear of losing face is a great motivator.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

During class days I block myself from Facebook, YouTube, SFN, and all my other favorite time-wasting sites (something like ten in total) with LeechBlock. Since so much of my homework is done on a computer, I have an almost instinctive reaction when I don't know how to answer a question: switch to Firefox, open a new tab, and start reading something else. LeechBlock embarrasses me with how often I find myself opening a tab with the little "Site Blocked" message.

 

I've only just started this, so I'm not sure how effective it is. I think I've been forced to find other ways of wasting time. I'm working on kicking the habits before grad school starts.

 

edit: as for research motivation, panicked articles like this one are helpful -- at least I know I can get funding! Also, "3,000 curies of Cesium" is a frighteningly large radioactive source.

[Dekan]

Please give thanks for the privilege of thinking and speaking in the English language.

 

Your post #8 can't be translated into French. Just try it!

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

That's interesting, but I don't know French. What makes it impossible to translate?

[Phi for All]

It's probably a cultural thing. Phrases like "time-wasting", "kicking the habit", and "panicked articles" don't have much of a counterpart in French culture. Les mauvaises habitudes sont de bonnes choses!